


Heroes of the Resistance: Mei-Ling Feng, Pierre Lebeau, Ben DeAngelo – EMP

by brickhousewriter



Series: Heroes of the Resistance [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Adult Language, Gen, I write close-canon fic, In Canon Character Death, Jaeger Feels, Jaeger Tech, This is a ship-free zone (unless you're Gipsy Danger whacking a Kaiju), This is mostly original characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 17:52:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brickhousewriter/pseuds/brickhousewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story answers the question, “How the hell did they get <i>Gipsy Danger</i> into the field so quickly after the Shatterdome was hit with an EMP?”</p><p>Because an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) is some serious shit.  It would have not only shut down LOCCENT, but damaged any powered up and unshielded equipment within range of the blast.  I have chosen to believe that Leatherback released an EMP that was a short-range, flat wave burst, not an expanding bubble, otherwise we would have lost the support helicopters that were flying overhead monitoring the battle.  And there are clearly still choppers in the air who deliver <i>Gipsy Danger</i> to the field.</p><p>This story is about some of the background characters that keep the Shatterdome and Jaegers running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes of the Resistance: Mei-Ling Feng, Pierre Lebeau, Ben DeAngelo – EMP

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows the timeline listed on the Pacific Rim Wiki, where the battles with Otachi and Leatherback take place on January 8th and then it is four days before Operation Pitfall is launched on January 12th.
> 
> I’m an American writing about a bunch of stuff I don’t know about, so any mistakes I made about culture, languages, names, geography, military protocol, science, medicine, etc. you can blame on me and my two buddies, Google and Wikipedia.

When the Kaiju known as Leatherback released an electro-magnetic pulse during its battle with _Striker Eureka_ , it not only disabled the Jaeger, but travelled across Dadong Bay, hitting the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and plunging it into darkness.

When the main inventory warehouse went suddenly pitch black, Master Supply Chief Pierre Lebeau muttered his most inventive curses.  He groped in his pocket for the flashlight on the end of his key chain, and when he found it he carefully made his way to the door of his office and called out into the void to the staff that he couldn’t see, but knew were working in the warehouse.  “Everyone alright?  Anyone hurt? Sing out.”  Then he listened as his people shouted out their positions, exactly the way they’d drilled it.  He spotted flashlights blooming in the dark, moving carefully towards the main entrance of the warehouse, which was their designated assembly point during emergencies.  While he waited for them, Pierre tried the phone on his desk.  The line was dead.  He cursed again.  They weren’t scheduled for a drill, and power and communications going down at the same time was a bad sign.  His computer monitor was blank, so he unplugged his laptop and tried rebooting on battery power.  When there wasn’t a spark of life anywhere he cursed again. And this time he used his special occasion curses. 

It only took a few minutes before his small crew was gathered around outside his office, waiting for instructions.  Pierre took a few seconds to take a quick head count and collect his thoughts before he got everyone’s attention.  “OK, we’ve not only lost power but communications are down and my laptop won’t boot.  Either there was a massive power surge in the ‘Dome or this was an EMP, and either way, that’s not good.”  He looked around the darkened warehouse thoughtfully, “Emergency power should have kicked in by now.  Also not a good sign.  I’ll need runners to carry messages.  I’m sorry to do this to you mate, but Hugh, you’re headed up to LOCCENT.  You’ll get there faster than any of the rest of us could and last I heard we still had Kaiju in the harbor.  We can’t afford to waste time.”  Hugh Jones had won the last three inter-departmental stair-climbing competitions held in the Shatterdome.  The local command center was 25 stories up, and without elevators, he was going to have to sprint the stairs to get there. 

“No worries mate!”  The rangy Australian grinned at him as he pulled on a headlamp.   Situations like this were the whole reason why he spent his free time training the stairs.

“Good man.” Pierre nodded his approval.   “See if you can find out what happened.  Let them know we’re all alright down here and ask them what they need from us.  And take a pair of these.”  He pulled a box off the nearest shelf and handed him two walkie-talkies. “We’ll be on the usual emergency channels, LOCCENT on one, Environmental on two, Flight Operations on three, Jaeger Maintenance on four, Medical on five.  We’ll be monitoring all channels down here.”   Hugh nodded and sprinted off towards the stairwell.

Pierre pointed to the next man, “Wang Chao, you’re headed over to Environmental.  Same thing, give them our status, see if they have any idea what happened, find out if they know what’s broken, and ask what they need from us.  I’m sure they’ll have a list by the time you get there.

Li Yan, you’re headed to Medical.  Tell my wife I’m fine.  Then the same thing, what do they need from us?  Go straight to your destinations, give your report, get any supply orders, and come straight back.  If they don’t have an order yet, don’t wait.  Just give them the walkie-talkies and tell them to call them in.  Don’t stop to gossip.  But I want to know what you saw on your way there and back, so keep your eyes and ears open.”  He pulled boxes down off the closest shelf and tossed one to each runner.  “Glow sticks.  Leave a breadcrumb trail so you can find your way home.” 

He pointed towards the door, then he tapped another one of his workers, “Pradeep, run the rest of this case of walkie-talkies down to Scramble Alley, make sure each of the ready rooms has at least one, and give the rest to the Jaeger Crew Chiefs. They’ll know who to give them to.”

Pierre silently thanked the gods for whomever had inspired their leader to come up with his grueling training schedule.  Marshall Stacker Pentecost ran constant simulations and disaster drills, and the old bastard was incredibly inventive when it came to cooking up disasters that could befall the Shatterdome. Because nukes were still the weapon of last resort against the Kaiju, they had included an EMP scenario in their roster of random disaster drills.  It had been hard to figure out how to simulate all electrical systems going down at once, but somehow the training group had done it.  His team had struggled through the first EMP drill, when they lost not only lights and power but their inventory management system.  Without computers to look up where things were stored, they had been reduced to browsing the long rows of the giant warehouse working in teams in the dark with flashlights.

But the after action reports had generated some great ideas for how to increase efficiency in the warehouse when their systems were down.  As a result they’d started reorganizing the stores so that the most commonly needed disaster supplies like flashlights, food, and medical supplies had been relocated to be closer to the warehouse entrance for easier access during emergencies.  It was only the larger items, like generators, that were still buried in the bowels of the warehouse.

Pierre turned back to the rest of his small warehouse crew and clapped his hands. “In the meantime, we’ve already made some educated guesses about what people are going to be looking for in this emergency.  We’re in the dark, so they’ll be wanting light.  Dig out the flashlights, battery powered work lights, and chemical glow sticks.  Power’s out, so we’ll need to pull more generators out of storage.  We’ve got Jaegers in the field, so there will be resupply to handle once they get back. And since the mess halls will be down, we should probably stage bottled water and MRE’s near the door, in case we have to feed people.”

“Boss, the computers are all down.  How are we supposed to find things?”

“We prepared for this people, remember? We’ve got maps and hardcopy directories of the location of everything from the last time we did inventory.  And we’ve got our walking computer right here.”  He slapped his second in command on the shoulder, “Zhang Wei! Which aisle are the gasoline powered generators stored in? Solar is going to be useless until morning.” 

“B-29, bottom shelf.  You’ll want the hand carts though if we can’t get the forklifts started up. And while I’m thinking about it, we’ve got a couple of cases of hardened laptops down at the very end of C-14, middle shelf.  If this was an EMP, we’re going to need working computers.  Only about half the systems in the building are properly shielded.”  There was a reason why Pierre always made sure to have at least one member on his staff with photographic or near-photographic memory.  Pierre’s memory was good, but the storage warehouse was cavernous.  It was impossible to find your way around it without maps, a computer, or a brain like Zhang Wei’s.

“Good call Wei.  Alright people, let’s start pulling supplies.  You know this room well enough to find most of the things we’ve forecast that we’re going to need.  If you don’t know where something is, ask me or Zhang Wei. Between the two of us, we should be able to steer you in the right direction.”

*****

As the EMP rolled across the bay, the local command center of the Hong Kong Shatterdome had only a few moments to realize that they’d lost contact with _Striker Eureka_ and her support helicopters before the LOCCENT too went dark.

“It’s some kind of EMP!”  Choi gasped.

“They’re adapting.”  Dr. Hermann Gottlieb said horrified.  The Kaiju scientist had never seen anything like this before.  “This isn’t a defense mechanism, it’s a weapon.” His voice was an awed whisper as his brain whirled with the dreadful possibility that the Kaiju had somehow developed a way to neutralize all of mankind’s defenses.

J-Tech Chief Tendo Choi frantically tried various switches on the console in front of him, but his systems stayed dark.  They were blind and dumb, with two Kaiju in the harbor, and no way to track or fight them.

He turned to the Marshall standing behind him and he could hear the panic in his own voice as he said, “It will take me two hours to re-route auxiliary power.”  He’d done it three times in drills so far, and two hours was his best time.  If his systems were actually damaged, it could take even longer than that.  The LOCCENT systems were just too complex, the amount of data that was being fed to his computers from the Kaiju monitoring stations around the world, from the various Jaegers and their pilots, and the computations that were required to analyze it in real time to monitor and manage combat conditions required connecting a huge number of servers and databases.  He’d been working for months to simplify the systems, but when they had a power failure it still took hours to restart all the servers and run system checks before Tendo trusted that things were working properly.  And Choi had only just barely gotten the systems back online after _Gipsy Danger’s_ new team’s test Drift.  He hadn’t even had time for a full systems check before Leatherback and Otachi had breached.

 “ _Striker_?” Pentecost barked.  Every line in his body was tense.

“Nothing sir.  The Mark-5’s are all digital. It’s fried. In fact, all of the Jaegers are digital.”

“Not all of them.” Raleigh Becket pushed his way out of the crowd in the back of LOCCENT.  His co-pilot, Mako Mori followed in his wake. “ _Gipsy’s_ analog,” he said, “Nuclear.”  They were the only two Jaeger pilots not out in the field.  After their disastrous trial run in _Gipsy Danger_ , the Marshall had declared the rookie team not ready for combat and had kept them in the Shatterdome while he sent the other three remaining Jaegers out to do battle.

Stacker Pentecost only hesitated for a moment.  He had two Rangers standing in front of him, itching to kill Kaiju, and behind him there were two category four Kaiju ready to rampage through the city of Hong Kong.  He had a duty to protect those 10 million citizens.  And he needed _Striker Eureka_ to seal the Breach.  If the Jaeger hadn’t been destroyed, they were his last hope for ending this war.

He nodded.  “Go.”

As the crew that had crowded into LOCCENT to watch the battle made a hole for the two Rangers to leave, Hugh Jones stumbled into LOCCENT, his chest heaving.  He held a walkie-talkie in each hand.  He bent over to catch his breath, and when the Marshall approached him, he held one out towards him.  Just then the walkie-talkie in his hand crackled.

“LOCCENT do you copy?  This is _Gipsy Danger_ Crew Chief.”

Pentecost snatched the walkie-talkie from Hugh, “This is LOCCENT, get _Gipsy Danger_ on deck.  Her pilots are on the way.”

“Copy that sir.  We’ve already completed pre-flight.  The crew needed the practice and I hadn’t started system shut-down yet.   _Gipsy Danger_ is hot and ready to launch, all we need are her pilots.”

Pentecost gave a sigh of relief.  _Gipsy_ just might arrive in time to save _Striker_. “Good woman Mei-Ling.”  Mei-Ling Feng had been _Gipsy Danger’s_ crew chief in Anchorage, and when they’d started the restoration project for the Mark-3 Jaeger, she’d been the first person he’d tracked down to join the team working on her refit.

“Thank you sir.  We’ve got comms down here now thanks to Pierre.  Which channel are the Jumphawks monitoring?”

Marshall Stacker Pentecost pivoted to look at J-Tech Officer Tendo Choi, who was holding the other walkie-talkie.  Choi adjusted the frequency of the walkie-talkie in his hand and held it out to the Marshall.  “Channel three sir.”

“All Jumphawks, this is Marshall Stacker Pentecost.  Do you copy?”

All sixteen chase helicopters answered in the affirmative.  Pentecost’s shoulders sagged in relief.  They hadn’t lost the Jumphawks or their crews.  He still had eyes and ears in the air.  “ _Crimson_ transport crew, get back to base.  We’re launching _Gipsy Danger_.  She’s airborne as soon as you get here.  _Cherno_ _One_ , check on _Striker Eureka_.  _Cherno_ _Two_ and _Three_ , you’re on search and rescue.   _Cherno_ _Four_ through _Eight_ , I want eyes on those Kaiju.  Understood?”

“Yes sir!” crackled back over the radio.

*****

Pit Crew Chief Mei-Ling Feng had been standing on the small ledge outside the postern door for Jaeger Bay 3, taking a few minutes to enjoy the view looking over Dadong Bay, when the alert sounded.

“ _Movement in the Breach.  Two Kaiju signatures, category four_.”  The calm voice of the computer broadcast over the public address system.  The announcement could be heard everywhere inside and outside the Shatterdome.  Mei-Ling took one last deep breath of salty air, and ducked back inside the Shatterdome, pulling the door securely shut after her.  She jogged across the floor of Scramble Alley towards her Jaeger, where her crew was already gathering at their designated assembly point.

Most of her crew were experienced Jaeger mechanics and techs, but unlike her original team when she was crew chief for _Gipsy Danger_ at the Anchorage Shatterdome, this group hadn’t been working together since before their Jaeger left the assembly plant.  When she’d gotten the call from Pentecost, Mei-Ling had tried to track down members of _Gipsy’s_ old crew.  But only a handful had been available or willing to come back to the service now that the news had broken that the Jaeger program was officially defunded and was going to be shut down.  She’d managed to coax her Crew Second, Jocelyn Hiltbrand and her lead mechanics, Les and Noel Tompo, into joining her at the Shatterdome.  The rest of _Gipsy Danger’s_ pit crew she’d cobbled together from the crews of fallen Jaegers and a few retirees that decided that civilian life wasn’t as peaceful as they’d hoped.  All of them knew their jobs and had worked on Jaegers in the field before.  But only about half of them had experience with the Mark-3s.  And since _Gipsy_ had only been declared fully operational a handful of days ago, Mei-Ling hadn’t had much opportunity to work out the kinks and ensure that her team was operating at full efficiency.

Climbing up on top of a toolbox so that people could see her, Mei-Ling addressed her crew. “OK people, we’ve drilled for this.  This time it’s for real.  We’ve got movement in the Breach.  Two Kaiju, so I’m not going to wait for the order. Let’s assume we’re being deployed and get started on pre-flight.” She clapped her hands, “Let’s go!” and her team scattered to their assigned tasks. 

Just then her crew-second waved her over to their command and communications shack.  “Mei-Ling?”

She hopped down off the toolbox and jogged over.  “What Jocelyn?”

“LOCCENT says that _Gipsy Danger_ is _not_ being deployed. Should we call them back?”

“No. The best time to run a drill is under actual battle conditions. If our people are going to make mistakes, it’s going to be when they’re excited and rushing to finish their work.  Why let all this adrenaline go to waste?  Let’s run through the whole start-up sequence.  Fire the old girl up and see how she looks.”

“Yes m’am.”

When a Kaiju came through the Breach, the Early Warning System transmitted an alert to all the Shatterdomes around the Pacific Rim.  Because they were silicone based and traveled in the depths of the ocean, Kaiju were difficult to accurately track.  Sometimes you didn’t know where they were going to make landfall until they left the depths and were almost in sight of the shore.  So it was common practice for the maintenance teams to warm up the Jaegers in preparation for a launch.  It took the pilots less than 10 minutes to suit up and get into the Conn-Pod, but the pre-flight checks and system startup for a Jaeger took much longer, depending on the model of the Jaeger, her propulsion system, and the efficiency of her crew.  Back in Anchorage, with her experienced crew, Mei-Ling had pre-flight down to 30 minutes.  When they’d rebuilt _Gipsy_ , they’d redesigned and upgraded several of her systems.  Mei-Ling was curious to see how long her startup routine took now, between the new systems and the inexperienced crew.  She glanced at the stopwatch in her hand.  Ten minutes so far.  She felt a rumble through the soles of her feet as the giant turbine in the middle of _Gipsy’s_ chest started to rotate.  She checked the stopwatch.  A full five minutes faster than usual.  She made a mental note to check to see if that was due to greater system efficiency or if someone had gotten excited and skipped a few steps in their checklist.

Twenty minutes later her team had completed pre-flight, _Gipsy Danger’s_ reactor was hot, her Transport cables had been lowered through the roof and connected to her shoulders, and the Jaeger was ready to launch.  The team put her systems into stand-by mode, cycled the iris in the dome over her head down to a small hole to keep the weather out until her pilots were aboard and they’d been given the signal to initiate launch sequence, and then the team reassembled at the foot of the giant machine.  The drive suit technicians would see to settling her pilots in the Conn-Pod.  Mei-Ling stood on the toolbox again and addressed her crew.

“I have good news and bad news.”  Her crew groaned.  “The good news is, you did better than I expected for a team that has only been working together for a couple of months.  We completed pre-flight in 33 minutes.  Good job team.  I’m proud of all of you.  The bad news is, _Gipsy Danger_ is not being deployed.  The Marshall is holding her back in reserve.”

“So what now boss?”

“We haven’t had _Gipsy’s_ systems hot more than a few short test runs.  I want to go ahead and run her in standby mode for the next hour, take some readings, and then we’ll reassemble and shut her down.”  She pointed to her crew-second, “Jocelyn, take a half-dozen or so techs and go monitor her systems from the Conn-Pod.  I’ll keep an eye on her readings from down here in comms.  Kalpana, you’re with me.”  She waved at the rest of the pit crew. “The rest of you, stick close.  I’d suggest not going further than the ready room or the mess hall.  I want you back here in an hour unless you hear from me first.”

“M’am, yes m’am.”

“Knock it off.”  Mei-Ling never felt particularly military, not when her uniform was grease stained coveralls, a tool belt, and hearing protection. And her crew knew it and liked to tease her about it.  She made a shooing motion with her hands, and her team started drifting off in different directions.  Some went to watch the launch of the other three Jaegers, as launch alarms had started to sound in the other maintenance bays.  Mei-Ling took a quick glance down Scramble Alley to check the progress of the other Jaeger crews.  _Crimson Typhoon_ and _Cherno Alpha_ rose slowly through the open roof, dangling from steel cables attached to their Transport choppers.  _Striker Eureka_ stood on her crawler, slowly moving towards the open launch bay door that led to a ramp into the harbor.  Then she ducked inside the communications shack to monitor her Jaeger’s systems.

***

Mei-Ling was only half an hour into her systems tests when there were screams as Scramble Alley lost power. Without any windows to provide light, the interior of the Shatterdome was completely black, except for the red glow of _Gipsy Danger’s_ nuclear core.

“Kalpana, see if you can get communications back.  I’m going to check on _Gipsy_.”

Carefully making her way across the darkened office, shuffling slowly to avoid the chairs and rolling cabinets that she knew were there but couldn’t see in the dark. Mei-Ling called out into the hanger bay, “Everyone OK?  Anyone hurt?”

“Crap, tripped over something in the dark.  But I’m OK.”

“Just surprised is all.”

“Fine over here.  What happened?”

“Damned if I know.  Let me call Environmental.”

Mei-Ling picked up the phone by the door.  The line was dead.  Everything in the communications shack was dark.  Standing just outside the door she cupped her hands and shouted up towards _Gipsy Danger’s_ glowing chest.

“Hey Jocelyn!”

“Yeah boss?” Her crew-second’s voice came faintly from somewhere high above her head.

“That wasn’t us, was it?”

Mei-Ling sent up a private prayer that _Gipsy_ hadn’t had some sort of power surge or system spike that sent a pulse through her umbilicals and blacked out the Shatterdome.  The last thing they needed was another disaster with her Jaeger. 

Any time you started up a Jaeger’s engines inside the Shatterdome, she was connected to umbilicals until she was actually launched for battle.  The power plants required to move a Jaeger produced massive amounts of energy and waste heat.  _Gipsy Danger_ was a walking nuclear power plant and they took advantage of that.  When you fired up a Jaeger inside the Maintenance bay, the energy generated by her engines was transferred to a turbine, which transferred power to the Shatterdome’s battery storage system.  The enormous batteries allowed the Shatterdome to power electric carts, reducing their fuel needs and avoiding exhaust fumes inside the huge hanger bays of Scramble Alley. The Jaegers were built with two cooling systems, one for use during maneuvers and battles, and a second one that circulated water through umbilicals through the Jaeger and back out to radiant heating systems that warmed the Shatterdome.  Even after you shut down the engines, it took them several hours to cool down, providing additional heat to the northern Shatterdomes like Anchorage and Vladivostok, or powering the cooling system if you were based somewhere like Los Angeles or Panama City.  The Environmental crew had configured the Hong Kong Shatterdome to capture the majority of its power needs from solar panels, wind turbines, wave turbines, and the Jaegers that were housed there. 

“No m’am.  It might have been a Kaiju.”

“What?”

Jocelyn raised her voice, so that her boss could hear her.  “We’ve been monitoring comms up here.  We lost contact with _Striker_ , then the Transport teams, then LOCCENT.  Yi was listening to the blow-by-blow.  He says that just before the feed went out, they said something about the Kaiju and lightning?  So we’re thinking, maybe the Kaiju somehow shorted things out?”

Most people who monitored the Kaiju engagements listened to the official communications channel, which relayed what little chatter there was between LOCCENT and the Rangers piloting the Jaegers.  But there was also an unofficial alternative communications channel that provided color commentary on every Kaiju battle.  It had started out as a joke.  During one engagement one of the Jaeger Transport co-pilots had started narrating over their com channel what he was observing as if it was a boxing prize fight, providing color commentary about each punch that was thrown and each blow that landed.  His transmission had been so popular back at the Shatterdome that people had encouraged him to do it again and started telling others about it.  Soon every Shatterdome had their own blow-by-blow broadcast, and the Transport teams competed to see who could provide the best color commentary. There was a sizable population in the PPDC that chose to listen to the blow-by-blow instead of the LOCCENT feed.  Stacker Pentecost had always encouraged his people to communicate.  So when he learned that the blow-by-blow had spread to his Shatterdome, while he didn’t exactly give it his blessing, he did turn a deaf ear towards it and allowed it to continue.

“I guess that’s as good a theory as any.  Jocelyn, I want a full systems check.   The Marshall is going to want a report.”  She turned and shouted back towards the comm shack,   “Kalpana, take a flashlight and collect the rest of the crew.  Check the ready room first, then the mess hall.  Then let’s break out the headlamps and get to work.”

Just then a light came bobbing out of the darkness.  “Chief Lebeau sent these.” Pradeep handed Mei-Ling a box of walkie-talkies.  “He said you’d know who to give them to.”

“Pierre is a genius.  Just what I needed.  Can you run a couple up to my crew-second up in the Conn-Pod?”  He nodded and jogged off towards the stairs that led to the upper gantries.

Mei-Ling adjusted the dial to channel one.  “LOCCENT do you copy?  This is _Gipsy Danger_ Crew Chief.”

There was only the briefest pause before the Marshall’s voice responded.  “This is LOCCENT, get _Gipsy Danger_ on deck.  Her pilots are on the way.”

 “Copy that sir.  We’ve already completed pre-flight.  The crew needed the practice and I hadn’t started system shut-down yet.   _Gipsy Danger_ is hot and ready to launch, all we need are her pilots.”

“Good woman Mei-Ling.” 

Mei-Ling knew it was just luck, but she accepted the compliment anyway. “Thank you sir.  We’ve got comms down here now thanks to Pierre.  Which channel are the JumpHawks monitoring?”

“Channel three.”  Tendo Choi’s voice came back over the walkie-talkie.  Mei-Ling didn’t even blink that the Marshall had handed her off to the J-Tech Chief.

“Thank you sir.  By the way, what the hell happened?

“We’re not sure.  We think it was some sort of EMP.”

“Roger that.  We’ll run a quick systems check while we’re waiting for her pilots. _Gipsy Danger_ Crew Chief out.”

Someone handed her a bullhorn.  Turning it on, Mei-Ling shouted up towards the Conn-Pod.  “Jocelyn!  _Gipsy’s_ going into the field as soon as we can get pilots in her and get her sealed up.  LOCCENT says this was an EMP.  Check as many systems as you can before they get here. And signal the crew topside to open the iris.  Copy?”  In the darkness she saw a flashlight waving.  Then the light disappeared inside the Conn-Pod.  A second light started climbing the access ladder to the landing pad.  Somewhere above her head the crew on the landing pad would hook their trucks to the manual access levers and retract the dome above _Gipsy Danger’s_ maintenance bay.  Mei-Ling couldn’t see it opening in the dark, but she could tell once it started raining inside Scramble Alley that the iris was opening somewhere above her head.

Two minutes later, the lights started flickering back on in the maintenance bay. After the darkness, even the low-level emergency lighting made Mei-Ling squint.  But she was glad that they had power back.  She really hadn’t wanted to attempt _Gipsy Danger’s_ first combat launch in the dark.

“Attention all personnel, this is Marshall Stacker Pentecost.  The Shatterdome has been hit with an EMP. We’ve got communications back, and Environmental is working to restore power.  Non-essential personnel are to shelter in place for the time being to allow Environmental to restore systems.  Essential personnel should have already reported to their duty stations.  _Gipsy Danger_ is go for launch.  That is all.  Marshall out.”

Three minutes later, they had 25% lighting as her top crew sealed the door of _Gipsy Danger’s_ Conn-Pod behind her pilots.  Since she wasn’t sure if the alarms were still out, Mei-Ling stood on the ground floor, megaphone in her hand, and called the alarm for all personnel to clear the floor of Scramble Alley. Then she radioed the Jaeger Transport teams, and on the landing pad above the hanger, eight sets of rotors fired, and the cables attached to _Gipsy Danger’s_ shoulders grew taught.  Mei-Ling could tell when the JumpHawks surged upwards, as _Gipsy Danger_ slowly rose through the open roof of the Shatterdome.

*****

Ben DeAngelo’s worst nightmare was all systems in the Shatterdome going dark at the same time.  The Environmental Systems Chief had argued with the Marshall when Pentecost suggested that they drill for total systems shutdown that such a situation could never happen.  Never.  But the Marshall had insisted.  And DeAngelo had had to figure out a way to simulate it without actually crippling any of their essential systems.  In the process he’d discovered just how many redundant systems the initial architects and designers had built into the Shatterdome and how hard it was to initiate a total systems failure.

So when they lost communications with _Striker Eureka_ and then almost immediately the lights in his office went out without warning, Ben felt as if he might actually be physically ill. He’d been monitoring the Kaiju/Jaeger combat.  And when communications cut out, followed by the power, he had a sick feeling that he knew what the cause was.  He groped around under his desk and pulled the trash can between his knees with one hand while he opened his desk drawer and found his flashlight and headlamp with the other. He only managed a few seconds with his head down, but it was long enough for the initial wave of nausea to pass before his lieutenant came charging into the room, waving his flashlight.

“EMP! It’s a goddamn EMP sir!”

“Shit.”  His stomach lurched again.  He dropped his head between his knees again and this time he lost the battle to control his stomach.

“You alright sir?” 

“Christ, no.”  Ben lifted his head and stood up.  “But I don’t have time for this. Let’s see what’s working and how fast we can get systems up and running again.”  Just in case, Ben brought the trash can with him.

As Environmental Systems Chief, Benjamin DeAngelo had borne the brunt of Stacker Pentecost’s rigorous disaster training program.  They’d drilled for power outages, fire, flood, terrorist attack, munitions explosion, Kaiju blood contamination, radiation leaks, airborne plagues, lightning strikes, mutiny, and whatever else the Marshall could dream up to make Ben’s life miserable.  His teams had been timed on how well they responded and how quickly systems were restored or shut down, depending on what the scenario required.  After the first few drills, Ben had decided that the only way to beat the clock and meet the Marshall’s expectations was for his teams to work without waiting for orders from him.  They’d spent several weeks organizing the environmental staff into independent work crews, each with a team lead who maintained radio communications with the central hub to report in their progress and receive any follow up orders.  It had taken several months, but as each crew learned their assigned sections of the Shatterdome systems, Ben rotated their positions so that they cross-trained on a new section of the sprawling infrastructure of electrical wiring, plumbing, heating and cooling vents, and safety shutoffs.  After months of training, his teams knew their way around all the Shatterdome’s systems, and each crew member knew the planned responses to most of the possible disaster scenarios without waiting for orders from command.

When he walked out of his office and into the Environmental Command Center, it was buzzing with activity.  Battery powered lights already illuminated the room and he could see the neat tangles of straight lines showing the systems status on huge white boards hanging on the walls.  There were assistants making notations on each board as reports came in from his field crews about the status of all their vital systems. The plumbing board still showed all systems green.  The ventilation and HVAC boards were also green, but covered with lightning bolts that indicated loss of power. So that was still good.  But the electrical board was another matter.  As reports flooded into the command center, green sections were being erased and red marker noted each section of wiring that was too damaged to carry live current.  The board was slowly going from all green to all red.

“Report!” Ben barked.

“Plumbing reports all non-electrical systems intact.  They just need power to be restored.”

 “All electrical systems down sir, including lighting, communications, ventilation, and main power.  We’ve fired up the backup generators, but nothing’s getting through the lines.”

“Crap,” Ben swore, “Are all those lines burned out? At this rate we’re going to need to switch over to the secondary power lines.”

Back in the early days of the Kaiju war, when the PPDC had build the Shatterdomes, nuclear weapons were still a possible weapon of last resort against the Kaiju, so the Shatterdome systems had been hardened against EMP.  In the years since, as the Jaeger program had been successful, they’d moved away from nukes and been able to stop worrying about the possible effects of EMP, and some people had forgotten about the initial redundant designs.  DeAngelo’s teams had discovered during their disaster training how hard it was to kill the systems in the Shatterdome.  The Shatterdome’s systems had backups on their backups. But the surge from an EMP could travel down electrical wiring, overloading circuits, frying relays and even melting wiring. 

The Shatterdome’s designers had not only built in redundant systems, but they’d also laid an entirely separate set of backup systems that were designed to be used in the event of an EMP.  There were miles and miles of wiring and pipes laid out in specially shielded conduits.  The secondary lines were not a continuous system, they had periodic breaks build in to prevent any surges from traveling the length of the system.  The necessary connectors were stored at each break, so that all the environmental team had to do was travel the lines, inspecting them before connecting each section and then diverting power or water to flow down the secondary lines.

“Already on it boss,” his lieutenant assured him. And just then the lights in the Command Center flickered back on.  It was only emergency level lighting, 25% of full power, but the fact that power was already starting to be restored made Ben’s stomach feel just a little bit better.

Even though he was confident that his team knew what to do, Ben always felt like since he was the boss, he should give some orders.  “OK people, you know the priorities.  As always, Medical gets power first.  Then communications and LOCCENT. We need to be able to talk to each other.  And we’ve got Kaiju in the field, so the Marshall needs eyes and ears to track them.  Then hook up Scramble Alley, just the working bays and the inventory warehouse.   They need full power ASAP.  We can run emergency power to the empty bays, just for safety, and bring them back up to full power when we have the time. Then let’s get power to the Mess hall, so we can all get a damn cup of coffee and a hot meal before we start work on restoring the barracks and family living quarters. Speaking of the Mess hall, someone run down and get me a goddamn ginger ale for my stomach while they’re still cold.”

Ben stood in the back of the Command Center, out of the way, and monitored the progress on the system status boards as his people worked to restore the Shatterdome’s systems.  His work was already done, all the months of planning and training and preparation to make sure that his teams functioned at peak efficiency.  Now all he could really do was sit back and watch his people do their jobs.  And hope that all his preparation were enough.  His stomach lurched again at that thought.  All this stress was _not_ good for his health.

Someone tugged at the trashcan in his hand, and he looked down to see his sixteen-year-old daughter, Kathleen, wearing a headlamp and holding a ginger ale.  “Here dad, let me take care of that.”  He let go of it, and she dug into her pocket and pulled out a roll of antacids. “I thought you might need these too?”

“Thank you sweetie, you take good care of me.”  Ben popped open the soda and sipped carefully.  His stomach accepted the fizzy offering without objection.  He absently leaned over and kissed the top of his daughter’s head.  “I love you.”  He put an arm around her and gave her a quick sideways hug.  Kathleen was so much like her mother, Anne.  It had been almost a decade, but he still missed his wife. She’d been killed in the first Kaiju attack, when Trespasser had spent days rampaging through San Francisco and southern California.  Back when they had no idea that this was the start of a long, horrible war.

“I love you too dad.”  She hugged him back.  They stood there arm in arm, watching the systems boards change status as reports continued to flow into the Command Center.

“What were you doing here honey?” He asked a few minutes later, eyes still on the status boards.

“Homework.  Until the lights went out.”  Ben knew he’d been working too hard when his children started showing up at the Command Center in order to spend more time close to him.  He’d meant to work on that, but there always seemed to be another crisis that demanded his attention.

“Is Daniel out with the crews?” His nineteen year old son had started working with his crews and was well on his way towards earning journeyman electrician status.  In a way, Ben was glad that he hadn’t wanted to go to college.  It made him feel better to know that his children were here in the Shatterdome with him, where he could keep an eye on them.

“Yeah, when I saw him at breakfast he said was going out with Jose’s crew today.”

“They’ll be in Sector 10 then.”  Ben didn’t even need to check to know which of his crews was assigned to which sections.  He’d spent weeks sweating over his duty rosters and schedule rotations.  He had them memorized.  Jose was a good man, he’d keep an eye on Daniel for him.  Ben took another sip of his ginger ale and tried to relax.  But he could still feel adrenaline buzzing in his veins. 

Fifteen minutes after the EMP hit the Shatterdome, Medical had enough backup generators to have full power restored, the public address system was up and running, and LOCCENT had 50% power, emergency power lit 25% of the maintenance bays, and _Gipsy Danger_ had been launched into the field.   Once power was restored to the Command Center, Ben retreated to his office to start writing up the report that he knew the Marshall was going to ask for.

Thirty minutes after the EMP hit his lieutenant knocked on the door of Ben’s office and reported that LOCCENT was fully powered and running off hardened laptops and battery walkie-talkies.  The JumpHawks had reported that the first Kaiju was dead, _Striker Eureka_ was on her way back to the Shatterdome, and that _Gipsy Danger_ was currently tracking the second Kaiju.  Ben breathed a sigh of relief and sent up a silent prayer for _Gipsy Danger’s_ crew to have good hunting. They were going to survive this.  They had to.  He dug an antacid out of his desk drawer and chewed it fiercely before popping a second into his mouth.  Goddamn Kaiju were going to give him an ulcer.

*****

The Shatterdome Maintenance Chief was bellowing at the assembled pit crews waiting on the hanger floor.  “OK people, the first choppers will be back in ten minutes.  I want every single team ready to check out your Jaegers.  If you’ve lost your Jaeger, half your team is working with Environmental to restore systems and the other half is assigned to one of the remaining two Jaegers.  Your crew chiefs will tell you where to report. I want the _Cherno Alpha_ team to assist in getting _Gipsy Danger_ battle ready again.  The Mark -3 is a little different than what you’re used to, but report to Mei-Ling and she’ll help you sort it out.  And I want the _Crimson Typhoon_ team working to get _Striker Eureka_ back up and running.  Report to Big Luke.  Inspection crews, you have two hours to assess your Jaegers and report to your Pit Crew Chief.  We need accurate estimates for repairs and especially for time to complete.  Let’s go!”  He clapped his hands and people scattered.

 _Gipsy Danger’s_ Pit Crew Chief, Mei-Ling Feng stood on top of a spare engine and read off her priorities to her crew.  She was a tiny thing, almost swallowed up by her dirty coveralls, her long dark hair coiled around her head and wrapped neatly in a bandana to keep it clean in the dirty maintenance bays of the Shatterdome.  She had a pair of hearing protection earmuffs hanging off her toolbelt, and a walkie-talkie stuffed in the thigh pocket of her coveralls.

“We’re following a new protocol today.  Kaiju are coming out of the Breach faster than ever.  We no longer have days to refit and resupply, we may only have hours.  So time is now a factor in repair decisions. First we resupply life support and munitions.  I want _Gipsy’s_ oxygen up to full, and all life support systems fully checked out.  Recharge the plasma cannons and check her chain sword.

Then we check the reactors and, since we’ve heard that _Gipsy_ vented coolant during the fight, I want all her coolant levels checked.  She also purged fuel during her fall, so I want her fuel tanks topped off again.  She had a hard landing, so we want to check all her gimbals and gyroscopes for damage.

Those are our immediate concerns.  While we’re doing that, I want a full report on all systems.  I want to know about any holes in the hull.  _Cherno_ crew, since you don’t know the Mark-3 systems, I’m assigning you to do a thorough visual inspection of _Gipsy’s_ exterior.  She’s going into the deep, so even a tiny hole could be a weakness. If you spot even a single bolt or rivet missing we need to know about it.   

We need to know what works and what doesn’t. What needs to be repaired and what needs to be replaced.  I also need to know when it would be faster to pull and replace rather than make a repair.  I need time estimates for every repair that you want to perform _before_ you start. One last thing,” And she paused for effect, waiting until the background chatter had died down, “No one, and I mean NO ONE, goes near _Gipsy_ without a suit until she’s been fully decontaminated.  Safety First, we don’t need anyone coming down with Kaiju Blue because they were careless about Kaiju secretions.  Nobody touches _Gipsy_ without at least gloves, got it?”

“M’am, yes m’am!”

“Alright then, we’re on the clock here people.  Suit up and let’s move!”

Eight JumpHawk helicopters lowered _Gipsy Danger_ onto the transport crawler waiting on the return landing pad at the Hong Kong Shatterdome.  As soon as the cables had been released and stopped swinging, members of her pit crew started swarming over her surfaces, inspecting her for damage even as she slowly rolled through the doors of the Shatterdome.  By the time she finished the slow crawl up Scramble Alley to her maintenance berth, Mei-Ling already had a preliminary report of the exterior damage, and crews were pulling spare plating out of stores to replace the hull sections damaged by Otachi’s acidic attack.  Her pilots weren’t even out of the Conn-Pod before the techs started working to remove sections of her hull.  Over the next several hours Mei-Ling supervised the initial inspection and resupply of _Gipsy Danger_.

An hour after the Jaegers returned from battle, Pierre Lebeau made a visit to Scramble Alley to personally consult with the Crew Chiefs of their two remaining Jaegers.  Pierre took pride in his team’s ability to supply whatever the Shatterdome’s people required.  But a double event was unprecedented.  As were Kaiju being able to launch acid attacks or an EMP.  And right now his team was stretched to the limit as requisitions were coming into the warehouse almost faster than they could pull supplies and fill them. Pierre was trying to juggle and prioritize requests from the Jaeger Crew Chiefs (who had to get their Jaegers prepped for Operation Pitfall) with requisitions from Environmental (who had to get systems up and running that the Crew Chiefs needed to perform their repairs) as well as other critical requests coming in from Medical, LOCCENT, and other departments.

The Shatterdome warehouses were vast, but they couldn’t always supply everything that was needed to keep the Jaegers in the field.   Like all the best supply officers, Pierre Lebeau had spent his career cultivating a vast network of contacts, on both sides of the law.  In times of war, it didn’t matter where you got your supplies, so long as you had them.  Officers didn’t care who supplied their ammunition, as long as it didn’t run out in the middle of a firefight. Soldiers weren’t picky about where their food came from, just so long as they got fed on a regular basis, there were enough condiments available to disguise the taste, and you didn’t run out of coffee and booze.  Pierre had an extensive network of local black market contacts that he used in emergencies, but if he was going to have to go outside of the normal supply channels, he’d need extra time.  And time was something that he knew they didn’t have.  Which was why he was checking now to see what each Jaeger needed to successfully complete Operation Pitfall.

In the first hours after the Jaegers returned to base they were covered with a small army of workers dangling from cables, crawling all over their surfaces, and leaning off gantries, visually inspecting every inch of their metal skins.  The two operational maintenance bays of Scramble Alley were crackling with near constant radio traffic as teams inspected their Jaegers and called in reports of what they found.  The two Pit Crew Chiefs, Mei-Ling Feng and Big Luke Jones, were constantly consulting with their teams as report after report streamed into their command and communications shacks.

 _Striker Eureka_ had been lucky.  Leatherback had landed a couple of solid blows on _Striker_ , but once the Jaeger was incapacitated, the giant Kaiju had circled her, seemingly gloating about its victory.  Leatherback had failed to do any more damage to _Striker_ before _Gipsy Danger_ had gotten into the field and engaged the Kaiju, drawing it away from the crippled Jaeger.

But _Gipsy Danger_ was another story, she’d taken damage from both Kaiju during the battle.  Leatherback had tossed her around and landed a few punches before _Gipsy_ put him down.  But Otachi had spit acid at the Jaeger, pushed her through structures and bridges, scraped her back across a building, then dropped her from seven miles up.  Considering what she’d gone through, _Gipsy_ was in good shape, but still needed a lot of repairs in a very short amount of time.  Mei-Ling worried that they wouldn’t be ready by the time the next Kaiju breached.

Four hours after the battle both Jaegers had been refueled, their reactors and coolant levels were checked, they had their oxygen and life support systems resupplied, and all their armaments, rockets, and ammunition were reloaded.  Then _Striker Eureka’s_ crews started constructing the harness on _Striker_ that would hold the payload for Operation Pitfall, while _Gipsy Danger’s_ crews started replacing the damaged plating on her back.

After eight hours, Mei-Ling’s crew-second Jocelyn came on shift.  They spent hours working together at a desk overlooking the repair bay, discussing priorities and supplies and schedules.  By the time Mei-Ling went off to bed at midnight, she was sure that Jocelyn knew exactly what repairs Mei-Ling wanted performed during the overnight shift, and in exactly what order.  The overnight crew checked Mako’s chain sword design, replaced a couple of damaged gimbals and a few that were worn enough to worry the techs, and continued to replace armored plating and seal holes in _Gipsy’s_ hull.

It was the armored plating that turned out to be the biggest problem.  _Gipsy Danger_ was a Mark-3, she’d been launched back in 2017.  They’d launched the Mark-4 series in 2018, and the PPDC had only managed to launch a single Mark-5, _Striker Eureka_ , in 2019 before political infighting had put funding the new Jaeger development on hold.  It had been six years since a new Jaeger had come off the assembly lines, and during those six years, the PPDC had continued to lose Jaegers in battle to the Kaiju until they’d gotten to their current point, where all they had left was two battle capable Jaegers. Spare parts had become increasingly hard to come by, and when they started building the Wall of Life, funding and supplies of materials had started to be diverted from the Jaeger program to the Wall.  Pierre Lebeau had spent the past several years scrounged up as many spare parts from damaged Jaegers and shuttered Shatterdomes as he could, but that didn’t mean that the parts he had in the warehouse were necessarily going to fit the two Jaegers that the maintenance crews were working at repairing.  Up until recently they’d had enough crew and enough Jaegers that if a repair couldn’t be made immediately, they had other Jaegers to put into the field while they worked to retrofit a part or machine the pieces that they needed.  But they no longer had that luxury.

The Search and Salvage teams were out every day, putting divers into Dadong Bay to search for the bodies of Sasha and Alexsis Kaidanovsky and Cheung Wei, Jin Wei, and Hu Wei.  It was only a few hours before they recovered the bulk of _Crimson Typhoon_ from the floor of the Bay.  A few hours later they located the lower half of _Cherno Alpha_.   And then _Crimson Tyhoon’s_ Conn-Pod with the bodies of her pilots.   Bit and pieces of the _Cherno Alpha_ continued to be recovered over the next couple of days.  She’d been spread all over the ocean floor when her reactor blew and it would be days before the bodies of her pilots were finally located.   Either Pierre, Mei-Ling, or Big Luke checked the maintenance bay where the salvaged pieces were being stored every couple of hours to see what had come in since the last time they checked.  Usually after the PPDC lost a Jaeger, there were weeks of inspections by after-action teams before the official combat post-mortem report was filed.  But when the Jaeger program was shut down, only a few people from Jaeger Forensics had chosen to follow the Marshall to the Hong Kong Shatterdome.  So there wasn’t really anyone to tell the Crew Chiefs that they couldn’t scavenge hull plating from the downed Jaegers.  And so they helped themselves whatever pieces of plating seemed like they might fit.

Les and Noelle kept their engineering teams working to retrofit components and reshape hull plating while Mei-Ling and Jocelyn supervised the delicate balance of juggling what they could repair based on priority, availability of components, and what sections of the Jaeger were currently accessible as they removed each section of her damaged hull.  Each time they removed a section of hull, it was more efficient to perform all the necessary repairs that they could fit into the time window before they had to seal her back up again.  Ever mindful that they were only about 1,000 miles from the Breach, and that the next Kaiju could appear at any moment, Mei-Ling’s goal was never to be more than an hour away from being able to start up pre-launch.  So over and over again they pulled off a section of hull plating, scrambled to make repairs, then buttoned her back up and pulled the next section of plating.  If they couldn’t make a repair in a one hour time window, they had to figure out how much work they could do outside of the Jaeger and come back to complete the repair when they could get it down to a single hour.  With enough time to plan for it, they could assemble entire systems on the floor of the maintenance bay then just pull out the damaged one and replace them.  The maintenance teams worked to make that happen for both _Striker Eureka_ and _Gipsy Danger_.

*****

Mei-Ling Feng stood on a high gantry, just above _Gipsy Danger’s_ shoulders and examined her Jaeger.  She was amused to see that in all the hustle and bustle of the past couple of days that someone had found the time to touch up the pinup girl on _Gipsy Danger’s_ shoulder and that she now had seven Kaiju skulls painted on her hull.  Someone had added Knifehead, Leatherback, and Otachi to her kill tally.  Mei-Ling smiled.  It felt right that _Gipsy Danger_ should go into what might be her final battle with the record of all her previous victories etched on her skin.  She was proud of what her Jaeger had accomplished.  And she was prouder still of her team. Somehow, against the odds, they had managed to repair all of _Gipsy’s_ battle damage and get her put back together in under four days. And just in time.  The Kaiju alert system had just gone off again, there were two category four Kaiju coming through the Breach.  And _Gipsy Danger_ was ready to go out and meet them. Mei-Ling heard the doors to the drive suit room open and looked up.  “Becket!”

Raleigh Becket had been heading across the gantry towards _Gipsy Danger’s_ Conn-Pod when he heard a familiar voice calling.  He leaned over and looked through the railings. “Mei-Ling?” he smiled down at her.

“Hold on, I’ll be right up.”  Mei-Ling scrambled up the stairs to the upper gantry. “Raleigh, you’ve been avoiding me.”

Raleigh flushed.  When he’d left the PPDC after Yancy’s death, he’d snuck out without saying goodbye to any of the friends that he’d made in the Anchorage Shatterdome.  And in the short time he’d been back in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, the Marshall had kept him too busy to have any time to think about catching up with old friends.  “No, just busy.”  He shrugged.

“It’s good to see you again.”  Mei-Ling stood looking up at him, then reached out to lay her hand on his cheek.  “I wish we had more time…”  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.  “Our prayers go with you.  Good luck.” 

Raleigh hugged the small woman that had been his crew chief the whole time he’d been assigned to _Gipsy_.  “Thank you.  For everything.” He murmured into her hair.  Then he released her and quickly stepped into the Conn-Pod before she could see the tears in his eyes.

Mako Mori stopped in her tracks when she saw Mei-Ling waiting on the gantry.

“I wanted to see you off.”

She held out her arms, and Mako walked into the hug,. “Mako, I’m so proud of you.  Look at everything you’ve accomplished.  Your sword design worked perfectly.  We didn’t have to make _any_ repairs to it after the battle.”

“Thank you Mei-Ling.”

Mei-Ling hugged her tightly.  “I love you.” She whispered.

“I love you too.”

“Good luck.”

*****

There were two ways to launch a Jaeger from the Shatterdome.  If the computer simulations predicted the engagement would happen within close proximity of the Shatterdome, you could open the main bay doors and roll her transport platform right into the sea and the Jaeger walked to the predicted engagement point.  But if the Jaeger needed to be transported long distances, you launched her through the roof and she was flown to the engagement point by her helicopter Jaeger Transport crews.  The domes built over each maintenance bay were retractable, allowing the Jaeger Transport teams to lift a Jaeger straight up out of the Shatterdome and fly the giant machines to wherever the Kaiju were predicted to make landfall.

It was over a thousand miles from the Hong Kong Shatterdome to The Breach.  The range for the Jaeger Transports was about 800 miles.  The Marshall had already coordinated with the Chinese and American Navies to have aircraft carriers available along the way for refueling stops on the flight out and then to provide a base to give the Transport Teams  somewhere to monitor the Jaegers during the mission.  Stacker Pentecost might know he’d bought himself a one-way ticket, but he was doing everything in his power to make sure that the rest of his team made it home after they’d delivered the payload.

Mei-Ling leaned over the gantry and checked that the transport cables were securely connected to _Gipsy Danger’s_ wide metal shoulders.  Pulling on her hearing protection, she took the lift all the way up to the roof of the Shatterdome to check the connections to the transport helicopters.  There were sixteen JumpHawks on the flight deck, long steel cables running from each down through the open iris of a dome to either _Gipsy Danger_ or _Striker Eureka_ waiting below in their repair bays.  Mei-Ling made a circuit around the gaping hole in the roof, checking the cable connections and talking briefly with the pilots of each of _Gipsy’s_ eight Transports.  On the other side of the deck Big Luke made the same circuit above _Striker Eureka_ , checking the cabling and touching base with his Transport crews.

Once Mei-Ling and Big Luke radioed the all clear, the launch alarms sounded below in Scramble Alley, and the JumpHawks fired up their engines.  As the rotors starting moving, Mei-Ling moved towards the railing, where she could safely watch _Gipsy_ ’s launch.  As _Gipsy’s_ Conn-Pod slowly rose above the rim of the Shatterdome, Mei-Ling pumped her fist in the air, hoping that the pilots inside could see her. As the Jaeger continued to rise, she took one last look at the machine she had spent so many years caring for.  When _Gipsy Danger_ had finally cleared the iris and hovered briefly above the Shatterdome before the Transport crews changed direction, Mei-Ling could have sworn that _Gipsy_ gave a little wave in her direction.  It was just the slightest lifting of a finger, not enough movement to shake the Jaeger or require the Transport Crews to make any flight corrections.  But it was there.  Mei-Ling was sure of it.

The Jaeger Transport crews slowly rotated, so that the Jaeger was facing away from the Shatterdome, and then with a roar of powerful engines, they started moving across Dadong Bay towards the South China Sea and the Breach.  Some of the flight crew stood watching them for a few moments, but most of them went inside, to relax or grab something to eat.  It would be hours before the Jaegers reached the Breach.  When they did, the whole Shatterdome would be huddled around the communications equipment, monitoring transmissions and praying for the success of the mission.

*****

 “Mei-Ling, you coming inside?  Big Luke had just been headed inside when he spotted her still standing at the railing.

Mei-Ling shook her head.  She didn’t take her eyes off the helicopters headed away from the Shatterdome.   “I’m going to stay out here for a bit.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“You don’t have to.”

“The Marshall said none of us shall stand alone today.  I’ll watch with you.”

Big Luke joined her at the railing.  He looked out across the bay, watching _Gipsy_ and _Striker_ moving farther away.   The wind picked up and Mei-Ling shivered, eyes still on the Jaegers shrinking in the distance.  Big Luke moved closer and put a companionable arm around her shoulders.  The difference in their height meant that Mei-Ling fit neatly under the tall Australian’s armpit.  She put her arm around his waist and he gave her a little hug to pull her closer so that he could shield her from the wind.

Mei-Ling spoke softly, “I was on the team that assembled _Gipsy Danger_ in the plant.  And then I was her crew chief for five years, first in LA and then at Anchorage. It broke my heart when they retired her to Oblivion Bay.  When the Marshall asked about Jaegers that we could get back into the field, I suggested we rebuild _Gipsy_. I spent months helping Mako and Tendo refit her. And now I may never see her again.”    

He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I know. Believe me, I know.” Luke looked out across the water at the Jaegers.  They were barely spots in the distance now.  “I’ve been with _Striker_ for five years.  They may just be metal and circuits, but you get to love the damn things.”

Mei-Ling leaned into Big Luke.  The warm weight of his arm across her shoulders made the ache in her heart ease just a little bit. Big Luke understood her grief.  It was comforting not to be alone with her feelings of loss.  “Thank you.” She whispered.

“We’ll get through this together.  Just like the Marshall said.”

The two of them stood together, arm in arm, staring out across the ocean, until long after their Jaegers had become tiny specs that disappeared over the horizon.  

**Author's Note:**

> This story started out about [a specific face in the crowd](http://brickhousewench.tumblr.com/post/64352339823/ive-posted-the-second-story-in-my-heroes-of-the). An Asian woman, hair done up in a Rosie the Riveter bandana. I started imagining who she might be. And eventually she turned into the Pit Crew Chief for _Gipsy Danger_. So anonymous movie extra, this story was written for you.
> 
> Edit 1/4/14 - I just found out my extra has a name! [Sin Dai](http://jaegercon.tumblr.com/post/57885481351/jaegercon-interviews-sin-dai-bonnie-siu-serje-basi), this is your story! Your face inspired Mei-Ling Feng. 
> 
> Also, the author very much likes receiving comments and/or kudos. I like to know what parts of my stories resonate with my readers. I'm starting to get really curious about how this story can have almost 2,500 hits and only 10 people liked it enough to leave me kudos.


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